Austin: Texas capital offers far more than SXSW

Jill Schensul, The Record, MCT

At the Long Center in town is a Monument to Texas Music, an area on the patio of the entertainment venue where they install round plaques to 10 musicians or people who have had an influence on Texas music promotion in their lifetimes.

At the Long Center in town is a Monument to Texas Music, an area on the patio of the entertainment venue where they install round plaques to 10 musicians or people who have had an influence on Texas music promotion in their lifetimes. (Jill Schensul, The Record, MCT)

Jill Schensul, The Record (Hackensack N.J.) (MCT)

AUSTIN, Texas — As you read this, Austin's South by Southwest festival is over for 2012. The "Welcome SXSW!" signs have been peeled from club facades, movie marquees, hotels and gas stations. The handbills advertising movies, bands and the newest interactive apps are gone for another year.

The streets around the Austin Convention Center are reopened to traffic. There are parking spaces. There are be parks. The exclusive parties are memories — if the attendees can remember them.

Austin, Texas, is just plain Austin, Texas, once again.

In other words, it's safe to book your vacation.

I've looked at Austin from both sides now — the "just" Austin, and the SXSW (or "South by," as some call it) Austin — and I think I vote for the former. Yeah, I saw some very cool movies at the film part of the three-pronged festival (music being the biggest component, and interactive digital the third).

Just plain Austin is anything but just plain. It is, as it claims, the Live Music Capital of the World. It is also a city full of beautiful parks, great (really great) food, cool hotels, neat museums, smile-worthy architecture and vintage signage, and some traits that quite simply are no-place-but-Austin. Traits that make you want to slap an "Austin: Keep it weird" bumper sticker on your car — or bicycle, since being environmentally PC is part of what this city is all about.

It took me a while to decide to come to Austin — though I'd heard about it for years. It's in the middle of Texas. Even if, as some of my friends and others who loved Austin were quick to tell me, "it's not really Texas," could I really spend a whole vacation just in Austin?

Then I heard about the famous bat population that lives under a bridge. And I was looking for a good destination that had a lot of culture, and was offbeat, and maybe was even a little challenging to my own ideas about a "cool" city to visit.

I decided it was time to finally visit, and planned to get there enough in advance of SXSW to see what Austin was really like without the crowds and the visiting musicians.

After spending more than a week in the city, I realized that even with another week, I would have seen only the tip of the iceberg that is Austin. It may be only a tiny oasis in the great state of Texas, but you know Texas: Everything is bigger here. So this one oasis — which also happens to be the capital of Texas — has more to visit than you could shake a strand of tumbleweed at.

—See Austin's bats take flight

I couldn't get much information about whether the Mexican free-tailed bats were back in town and hanging out under the Congress Avenue Bridge (aka The Bat Bridge). I knew they would definitely be back in force in the coming weeks, so I took my chances — hedged my bats? — that at least a few of the bats that make up Austin's record-breaking urban population of 1.5 million bats might have already arrived.

So we were there at dusk, patiently waiting, and were not disappointed. Bats came whipping out, at first just testing the … what, the air? the bugs? … and then streak-flapping out from under the bridge in little clouds.

Mexican free-tailed bats make their nightly departure from underneath the bridge they call home from March to early November. Peak season is late July through mid-August.

With the lights of the Austin skyline just beginning to twinkle and the heart of the Texas state capital as the backdrop, the first of the bats appear from the crevices between the support pillars and the lanes of road. The bats soar upward, forming a traffic pattern in the sky as they head upriver on their nightly feeding run.

Viewing tips: The bats generally emerge before dark, but may fly late if conditions are not favorable. For best viewing, watch from the Austin American-Statesman's Bat Observation Center on the lawn next to the bridge — there's no admission fee. The center offers free parking, educational kiosks and Bat Conservation International Bat Interpreters Thursday through Sunday, June through August. You might want to consider bringing an umbrella, even if there's no rain in the forecast: droppings are inevitable when hundreds of thousands of bats are flying around.

—Music-related attractions

With all of the Austin-related music notables, most any club in Austin has a claim to fame of some sort. But a couple of attractions in town are especially dedicated to Austin music.

One of the newer ones is the Austin Music Memorial. On the expansive patio of the Long Center, which features concerts, movies and performances ("Young Frankenstein," a musical, was there when I visited), you'll find round markers commemorating people who either made music in Austin or in some way promoted music here: from Janis Joplin to Christopher B. Stubblefield, aka Stubbs, who started out as a chef, mastered the art of barbecue and finally opened his own restaurant in the '70s. Stubb's became a central venue in the exploding Austin music scene, with local performers such as Joe Ely and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Other famous musicians who would "play for their supper" included Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Robert Cray, George Thorogood, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Linda Ronstadt and the Fabulous Thunderbirds.

Across from the monument, standing beside the lake in the Auditorium Shores park, is a statue of Vaughan, where folks line up and wait their turn to have their photo taken with the Texas legend.

Just opened this month at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum is the Texas Music Roadtrip exhibit, the largest museum exhibition ever curated to tell the story of Texas music and its impact on American music in general.

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IF YOU GO:

WHERE TO EAT:

—Guero's Taco Bar, 1412 South Congress; guerostacobar.com

— Parkside Austin, 301 E. Sixth St., parkside-austin.com

—Clay Pit, great Indian food, 1601 Guadalupe St., claypit.com

—Mother's Cafe: 4215 Duval St., motherscafeaustin.com

—Casa de Luz: 1701 Toomey Road, casadeluz.org/Austin

—For information on food trailers/carts in Austin, check out austinfoodcarts.com. It has a link to a guide to food carts downtown, as well as one for an app you can download on your iPhone/iPad.

MUSIC:

Austin City Limits: Tapings of the TV show are at Austin City Limits Live at The Moody Theater, 310 W. Willie Nelson Blvd. Tickets are free, but are distributed via lottery. Tours of KLRU's Austin City Limits studio are usually offered at 10:30 a.m. Fridays. Information about tapings: acltv.com/upcoming-tapings. One-hour tours of the theater are offered at 11 a.m. weekdays (arrive at 10:45); tickets are $8, available at the venue or the Austin Visitors Center, 209 E. Sixth St. More info: acl-live.com.

Stubb's Bar-B-Q: 801 Red River St. Music most nights; also check out its gospel music brunch on Sundays. stubbsaustin.com